Fair500 → Analysis → Highest-paying workforces
Meta reports a median employee compensation of $388,200 across nearly 79,000 people. Ross Stores reports $10,059. Both figures are correctly disclosed under the same rule.
Median employee compensation is the least-discussed half of the CEO pay ratio and, for most purposes, the more interesting one. It is the only mandatory disclosure that tells you what a large company pays a typical person who works there. It is not an average dragged upward by executives, but the actual midpoint of the workforce.
Note that these are total compensation figures on the same basis as the executive numbers: salary, bonus, the grant-date value of any equity, and benefits. At companies where rank-and-file staff receive stock, that matters a great deal.
| # | Company | Sector | Median worker pay | Pay ratio | Employees |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Vici PropertiesVICI | Real Estate | $468,119 | 27:1 | 28 |
| 2 | Meta PlatformsMETA | Communication Services | $388,200 | 66:1 | 78,865 |
| 3 | BroadcomAVGO | Technology | $378,281 | 326:1 | 33,000 |
| 4 | Alphabet Inc.GOOGL | Communication Services | $310,826 | 33:1 | 190,820 |
| 5 | IncyteINCY | Health Care | $295,914 | 108:1 | 2,844 |
| 6 | NvidiaNVDA | Technology | $282,050 | 142:1 | 42,000 |
| 7 | Blackstone Inc.BX | Financials | $275,000 | 399:1 | 5,285 |
| 8 | Vertex PharmaceuticalsVRTX | Health Care | $264,487 | 80:1 | 6,400 |
| 9 | Host Hotels & ResortsHST | Real Estate | $243,291 | 67:1 | 162 |
| 10 | IntuitINTU | Technology | $242,190 | 139:1 | 18,200 |
| 11 | Gilead SciencesGILD | Health Care | $238,979 | 104:1 | 17,000 |
| 12 | APA CorporationAPA | Energy | $237,527 | 54:1 | 1,791 |
| 13 | Adobe Inc.ADBE | Technology | $235,989 | 210:1 | 31,360 |
| 14 | AirbnbABNB | Consumer Discretionary | $235,416 | 1:1 | 8,200 |
| 15 | Palantir TechnologiesPLTR | Technology | $235,115 | 23:1 | 4,429 |
| 16 | VerisignVRSN | Technology | $233,491 | 60:1 | 928 |
| 17 | Palo Alto NetworksPANW | Technology | $225,828 | 456:1 | 16,068 |
| 18 | EOG ResourcesEOG | Energy | $225,792 | 71:1 | 3,400 |
| 19 | Occidental PetroleumOXY | Energy | $225,637 | 80:1 | n/a |
| 20 | ModernaMRNA | Health Care | $225,053 | 84:1 | 4,700 |
The technology companies at the top of this list, with Meta at $388,200, Broadcom at $378,281, Alphabet at $310,826, Nvidia at $282,050, Intuit at $242,190 and Adobe at $235,989, grant restricted stock broadly, not just to executives. A software engineer's total compensation at these firms is typically salary plus a substantial annual equity refresh, and the disclosed median captures both.
This is why the figures look startling next to a national wage statistic. They are not salaries. Meta's median reflects a workforce of engineers receiving equity in a company whose shares have performed well; a comparable disclosure a few years earlier or later would look materially different on the same pay policy.
Alphabet is the most impressive entry, because scale usually defeats this. Maintaining a $310,826 median across 190,820 employees is a different achievement from maintaining it across 5,000. It also produces the narrowest pay ratio of any very large employer in the index, at 33:1.
Biotechnology appears repeatedly: Incyte at $295,914, Vertex at $264,487, Gilead at $238,979, Regeneron at $174,138. These companies employ research scientists and clinical staff almost exclusively, with no manufacturing or retail population to pull the midpoint down.
Energy is the same phenomenon in a different industry. APA at $237,527, EOG at $225,792, Occidental at $225,637, ConocoPhillips at $212,063, reflecting petroleum engineers, geoscientists and skilled operators, and a sector median of $162,405 that is the highest of any industry in the index. Utilities follow at $149,396, on a workforce of engineers, plant operators and linemen that is heavily unionised and almost entirely full-time.
Vici Properties tops the list at $468,119 across 28 employees, and Host Hotels reports $243,291 across 162. These are REITs whose operational work is performed by tenants and third-party operators. The "workforce" being measured is a small corporate team of real-estate and finance professionals. The median is accurate and describes almost nobody who works in the buildings.
A high median is mostly a statement about who a company hires, not about how well it pays them relative to what they produce.
The clearest demonstration is the energy sector. Its median worker pay of $162,405 is the highest in the index and its median pay ratio of 81:1 is the narrowest. On both headline measures it looks like the fairest industry in America. But energy also generates $476,467 of profit per employee, more than double the next sector. So despite paying the best wages in the S&P 500, its workers receive one of the smallest shares of what they help produce.
Run the comparison the other way and it is just as stark. Darden Restaurants pays a median of $23,074, which is near the bottom of the index, and generates only $5,455 of profit per employee. There is very little surplus to distribute. The company pays badly and shares a large fraction of a small pie; the energy producer pays extremely well and shares a small fraction of an enormous one.
This is the whole argument for the second measure. Neither median pay nor the CEO pay ratio can distinguish these cases. Only comparing pay to profit per employee can, which is why Fair500's combined score averages a pay-gap rank with a pay-versus-profit rank. More on profit per employee here.
Three cautions.
The median is not the mean, and not a salary band. Half the workforce earns less than the figure shown. At a company with a wide internal distribution, such as a bank with both traders and branch staff, or a technology firm with both engineers and support roles, the median tells you about the middle and nothing about the spread.
Equity-heavy medians move with the share price. Where a large share of compensation is stock granted at fair value, a company's median rises and falls with its own valuation. That is a real component of what employees receive, but it means the figure is not a stable measure of pay policy year to year.
Companies choose their methodology. The rule permits considerable latitude in identifying the median employee: which compensation measure to rank on, whether to sample, which date to use, and whether to exclude a small share of the foreign workforce. Two firms with identical workforces can report different medians. The details are here.